


Tamerlane

by punkerotica



Category: Kind Of - Fandom, OCs - Fandom, POE Edgar Allan - Works, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 15:58:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10834545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkerotica/pseuds/punkerotica
Summary: I promised a friend a small drabble about one of my OCs, and so i ended up with a short fucking book and a major character death woops





	Tamerlane

There was a sour taste hanging off the air as it weighed in Edgar's lungs with its usual summer sodden quality. He sat, hunched over and hugging his knees, staring blankly at the opposing white wall of the medical tent as bodies hustled around him. Twice now, doctors—fellow mutants and residents of the school who had flown in to care for the X-Men post-battle—had attempted to give him care, both of which Edgar had shaken off, insisting his injuries were hardly more than surface scratches, and they'd be more useful helping the others. Said others included his once-apprentice and half-brother, Dorian, who was clutching desperately to his best friend and lover, Costello, as the pale-skinned boy bled easily through bandage after bandage on his abdomen. There was a certain business surrounding Costello, who had easily suffered the worst of the injuries, and that panicked bustle was bleeding over to the next few beds, which held Peter, nursing a shattered wrist, Octavia and Rat who were both heavily battered and aged but still seemed more concerned with the happenings of Dorian and company, and Presley, who was being doted upon by her big brother, Victor, thus gaining the avoidance of most of the other physicians; it was no secret Victor was not good company to them.   
Throughout the tent Tibby milled his way between patients, doing what he could to help and often having more answers than the doctors themselves. He carried an air of relaxed professionalism, though to anyone who had known him as long as Edgar, it was clear he was writhing in his own anxiety. Edgar could forgive him—it was a stressful situation. A man was likely dying in the arms of friends and family as others suffered their own myriad of ailments, all the while trying not to choke on the stench of iron that dripped heavily over their senses. Outside the dim atmosphere of the tent, Link tried to gather the others, pushing down his own sense of sickness. The immortal could survive anything, but couldn't bare to see friends die. He knew he'd only get in the way inside the tent and so busied himself away from what felt like impending tragedy.   
Through all of this Edgar remained stagnant, still watching the dirtied white wall gently sway as people rushed by on the other side. He didn't notice his own fingernails digging deeply into the flesh of his thighs until Victor padded up and clicked his pen to garner the poet's attention.   
"I hear you've scared off two doctors so far," a coy smirk pricked at the side of his mouth if only for a second, "I don’t scare so easy. So," Vic pulled up a metal cart topped with cotton balls and rubbing alcohol, "looks like you're going to have to let me do the bare minimum. Kindly... unfold yourself?" He gave another bit of a smile to himself, though it was clear he was more comfortable working with the already dead. His bedside manor left much to be desired—a spirit similar to Edgar's, however, let the two of them feel perfectly at ease in the interaction which was sure to be painfully awkward to watch from the outside. Said interaction was enveloped by almost complete silence, disturbed only every so often by a sharp hiss from Edgar as alcohol seeped into wounds previously thought to be much shallower.   
"I don't need your help." Edgar clenched his fists while Victor fastened another bandage to his skin, who in turn simply hummed and pressed a little harder to draw another flinch from Eddie. "Touche."   
It was when Tibby approached that Victor seemed to conveniently finish up his work and, without meeting T's eyes, returned himself to his sister's side. Now feeling a sense of privacy at being alone with his best friend near the back of the tent, Tibby's face seemed rife with all the emotion it had been masking only moments before. "I don’t know if he'll make it." The tall mutant's voice rung tired as he collapsed on the bed next to Edgar. E, in response, shuffled further from his friend, garnering him a moment of a confused expression before Tibby shrugged it off. Edgar, however, was not afforded such a luxury, and his exhausted mind reeled over why he was feeling so uncomfortable sitting next to Tiberius.   
There was a repulsion Edgar could not shake, a repulsion that offered the raven-haired boy something of a gagged feeling, meaning he was in no shape to offer his friend any solace. Tibby quickly picked up on this cue, gave Edgar one last sympathetic once-over, before hoisting himself up and once again making his way to Costello's bedside. The commotion there seemed to have slowed, but the same loyal faces remained plastered at his side as hopeless onlookers. But that sympathetic glance was seared into Edgar's brain, and there it played, over and over, igniting some rage within that he'd not felt in some time: a genuine hatred.   
It was then that Edgar, through his complete and utter exhaustion, and while the world around him moved very much alive with the people he was supposed to love, came to realize that he was on another great downturn.   
What was to be understood was that a downturn for Edgar was abysmal and profound—where his greatest work stemmed from and his woes would paint paper, worlds, and often many a hospital gown. So it was in the subsequent days following the battle that Edgar, at returning to the mansion, had locked himself away in his room and refused to venture out. He ate only the food that Tibby slid under the door, and even that mostly went to waste, and his lips were cracked with dehydration as for most of the time the only liquid within reach was either ink or bourbon. His room, though curtainless and often sunny, felt bare and colourless, framed by rotting infrastructure that he was certain was only visible in his mind. It was two weeks of this before Tibby finally managed to break in the door, desperate by this point to find him alive.   
Alive, he was, though the dank air and putrid, musky scent that assaulted Tibby's senses like a wall could have suggested otherwise. Edgar sat on the floor, surrounded by empty bottles and discarded paper, and it was a mystery as to whether it was sweat or grease that gave his skin a horrendous glisten. His eyes as he looked up slowly and achingly were sunken and hollow, as he'd not slept for days, and his pen hand—usually the only steady thing about him—shook as he struggled to lift it from the paper to create a new word. Tibby launched forward but was stopped short by a violent snarl from Edgar, who waved the blade of his quill in T's direction.   
"Out," Edgar croaked, who, when met by stillness, mustered what little strength he could to advance aggressively once more. "I said OUT!"   
"What the bloody hell has gotten into you? Edgar, there's a world outside your door, a world you're meant to be a part of." Edgar rolled his eyes and collapsed his back against the side-turned desk once more. "Classes started two days ago. Did you even notice? I've taken your students but I can't keep covering for you, you need help! And alcohol? Christ, Edgar, I thought you were over this years ago!"   
"I don't need to teach, cancel my classes, fuck them. Fuck everyone. Fuck you!" Edgar spat, struggling to keep his very drunk self upright.   
"Well aren’t you just doing peachy. I'll order the doctors to come collect you if I have to, I'm not leaving you in this squalor." T was struggling to keep his composure, but there was only so much he could do for someone so hellbent on keeping themselves from help.   
"Why bother? It's a waste of your time. You obsess over other people while you're still repressing every fucking feeling under the sun you goddamn hypocrite!" Edgar drunkenly smirked to himself, hiccuping, proud of his little dig.   
Said dig was more successful than Tibby was prepared to admit, but he continued to press on, his voice ever so slightly raised. "And why can't you just accept help? It's been nearly a century of my picking up your messes, because you're so goddamn wrapped up in yourself that you spiral. You're not a fucked up 24 year old anymore, Edgar! It's time to grow the hell up! I stick around cause you're my brother, but--"   
"I DON’T WANT YOUR BROTHERHOOD." Edgar's voice rang unsettingly clear, as if of all things he was none surer of than this, which struck low in Tibby's gut. "You're so wrapped in being some kind of bullshit martyr, so convinced that I'm wrong when I say I don't need you, but I genuinely and unabashedly do not want you anymore, Tiberius. I don't want you, my father, the X-Men, all I want is my solitude and some peace of fucking mind!" Curious, as his mind had not tasted peace in all the years he could remember. "Leave me!" Ed heaved, having spent so much of himself in yelling at Tibby, and his raspy breaths were all that filled the empty and shocked air that followed.   
It was without a word that Tibby swallowed hard and stomped from the room, slamming the broken door hard in his wake.   
The harsh echo of that sound reverberated through Edgar as he collected himself messily, stumbling drunkenly from his room clutching all the books and booze he could fit into his arms, and towards the exit. He was to quit this house, remove himself from all emotional ties, it was just... easier. A few students caught sight of his disgraceful exeunt, his dropping some bottles and leaving their shattered remains untouched all the while mumbling what was sure to be some string of curses acquiring some attention and forcing others to turn away.   
During this, Link stood at the blackboard of his classroom, writing some French proverb while a small group of young adults followed his cursive writing diligently. "Vous devez choisir un philosophe de votre goût par la classe suivante, et je veux …" He trailed off as he caught sight of a distraught-looking Tibby, stood pathetically in the doorway. L's stomach dropped and he brushed his students off, "Donne-moi quelques instants," before approaching his co-head with what was unknowingly a look of pure dread.   
"Tibby, what's up? Is it Costello?"   
"No, no, he's stable still. It's Edgar."   
Link couldn't muster a vocal response. He'd had this conversation not ten years earlier, all in similar fashion, just hours before he'd shared his husband's last breath. Realizing this, Tibby spoke up again, shaking his head. "He's fine, he's just... No, he's not fine, he's a fucking disaster zone, Lincoln. And he's washed his hands of me. Of all of us."   
L felt guilt at the wave of relief—this was by no means good news, but it was better than the latter possibility. "Okay, this is fine, where is he?" The Italian wore some shade of no-bullshit, like he had been preparing to handle this situation for years, and in many respects he had.   
"That's just the thing. This isn't fine, Link. I've seen him at his lowest and this is worse, somehow. He looks like a corpse, he smells like one, too. I think it's time we let him hit rock bottom. I can't fucking stand saying it, but I just can't keep putting myself on that limb for him, it's taking too much out of me, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, I should have done better, I--"   
Link stepped forward and pulled Tibby into a hug, where the taller man cried on his shoulder. "Okay."   
"Okay?" Tibby spoke, muffled.   
"We let him go. Either he'll come back to us or we'll fish him out of a gutter somewhere in some time. But you're right. Every time he falls someone catches him. I've hit that rock bottom, you've hit it, too, and if we keep catching him he'll just jump again. So this time we let him fall." Something deep inside Lincoln was screaming, telling him how wrong this all was, and he felt Tibby heard the same voice in his own head, but the two spoke nothing of it, just met in solemn agreeance. "But Tibby," L's grip tightened around the taller man's wrist, "keep an eye out for him."   
Cracking his knuckles and giving a nervous nod, Lincoln returned to his class, where he seemed to stumble through sentences and struggle to keep his mind from wandering the rest of the day.   
In the following couple of weeks the two men wish they could say they had been stress-free, having had let go of their hold on of Edgar, but the fact that he'd disappeared and had become untraceable had only maximized their panic. It had drawn in, also, the attention of others such as Dorian, who now found himself not having to worry for his husband and in place had started to inquire after his older brother. In fact, a general uneasiness had shifted itself almost as a cloud over the mansion, and even those who hardly knew Edgar feeling just as anxious.   
Edgar, on the other hand, found himself slipping in and out of consciousness, remembering quite clearly his unstable gait from the mansion and down the road a mile or so, but how he ended up in a dank little train terminal somewhere westward of New York was beyond him. When he grew coherent enough to protest his somehow involuntary movement—up the stairs into frigid midnight air and down alleyway after alleyway—was right about when his mass was thrown carelessly on the steps of some hospital.   
“Baltimore Med…?” Edgar stuttered as he reached for nothing in particular. How did he end up in Baltimore? More urgently, why was he covered in deep purple bruises and blood that was surely his own? What felt like just a blink revealed another loss of consciousness as when his eyes reopened he was being strapped to a gurney while concerned doctors and nurses dodged his flailing arms and spat-out insults. “What--what's happening? Who's there?” A dizziness fogged his mind, not to mention the attacks his own brain were dogging on him after being without medication for what was probably days. Blackness was encroaching, and the beasts that lurked the back halls of his consciousness were beginning to seep through the cracks, ever so slowly filling his vision like tendrils and vines.   
Edgar was quite certainly going mad. The walls around him melted and the bed under him seared red hot, and he was fairly sure he could feel the cold frail hands of one of the nurses clamped wickedly around his neck, sending his breaths out in short, panicked gasps. The voices surrounding him sounded slower than they should have, and each finger laid upon him in aid felt like a dagger on his flesh.   
He was crying, now, desperate for a friendly face; they were all gone, though. He'd done what was necessary and pushed them all away. The hardest by far was Tibby, but to wash his hands of his best friend was to gain his freedom to accept death. To rip the idea of Edgar's humanity from them was to ease their pain so despite his suffering, he had done what he had needed to do. To be fair to them, that is.   
The date was October 7th, they placed him in an ICU room, the hisses and beeps of the machines playing dull and off-time in his head as they competed with sounds and voices no one else was hearing. They had stabilized him; Eddie sat propped up pathetically, unable to move his head as his whole body felt numb. Maybe it was for the better as his skin was three shades darker from all-over bruising, and the copious amounts of morphine pumping through him felt like coming home. It was then that a dark figure progressed into the room with impossibly heavy footsteps. This figure wore all black, his face mostly hidden by a formal looking hat, but when the man looked up to meet Edgar's gaze it was unmistakable, for the dead blue eye staring deep into him could belong to the only man with a soul as dead to match. "Pa.." Edgar choked out. A smaller woman with a nervous hurry to her step followed closely behind, "Franny!" Ed tried to smile, though he was unsure as to whether it was the drugs or John Allen's leering eye that inhibited him.   
He then took notice to two teenagers playing in the opposite side of the room: his siblings, who he desperately wanted to join as they excitedly waved him over, but evermore he just sat, longing. A warm pressure laid upon his arm stole his attention, and there, beside him sat his mother, smiling kindly, just as he'd remembered her. Perfect in every respect. "Don't you worry, baby, it'll all be okay soon. I'm here, baby. I'll always be here." Eliza brushed her thumb across his cheek, and just for a moment the warmth of her hand filled Edgar with a bliss he'd not felt in a long time.   
That bliss, however, was cut short rather violently. All the pain the drugs had been masking seemed to grow immune, crushing him with an unexplainable weight. Edgar called out, but to his dismay he found the room around him suddenly deserted. He felt a chain fasten itself tightly around his chest and relentlessly tightened its grip, making every breath feel as if his chest were caving in and he was turning inside out. Edgar sputtered and coughed, scratching at his chest, opening fresh scabs and digging deeply into his own flesh, and by the time doctors had arrived he was once again drenched in his own blood and gasping for breath that seemed to quite stubbornly evade him.   
And try as they might, but the moment a blue aura exhumed itself from his skin, Edgar fell pale and limp, too weak to fight for breath any longer. The Raven had agreed it was time, and left him to endure the last moments of life in excruciating pain, though to protect Edgar from pain was never it's job to begin with. There was a sweetness to it all, and when, beyond the doctors, he saw his daughter, not even attempting to hold back her tears, Edgar felt a release from the chain around his heart, the burning from his wounds, the aching from his bruises and joints, and most notably, from the screaming and pressure in his mind. He knew he would not forget the pain death had afforded him in his last moments, nor the betrayal he felt as he left this earth completely alone and terrified, but to have finally answered the question he'd been asking for so long now—it was freeing to have closure.   
It was not for two more days that the hospital finally gave word to the only address they could find on his persons, and it was Link who received the call with Tibby in the room. A stunned silence followed their promise to send the belongings by shortly, but it was to be certain that the second Link was left alone he had thrown the contents of his desk askew and, just as he'd done a decade earlier, painted the walls with his own blood and misery. Lincoln cursed as each vein closed itself before he could lose himself in some violently self-induced sleep, and so he continued to work at it until the pain mentally grew too unbearable and he collapsed, shaking and staring up at the roof.   
He could have stayed like that for weeks, and where Tibby had gone he was sure the other mutant felt just as hopeless, but what arrived with the body was not just Edgar's wallet and the filthy clothes on his back, but two filled, leather books, one of a dark green whose first page read "TIBBY", and another of dark purple that read "LINCOLN". It was these notebooks, filled with personal notes, essays, poems and stories, most addressed to the name bearers, though some included messages for Dorian and James, that concluded Link and Tibby's manic states, as well as Edgar's life story. The loss still bore deeply inside their chests, but the books gave them something tangible, something alive and breathing to hold on to; it was Edgar's final art, and it was created just for them.


End file.
